Apple Ping: Spammers Test New App’s Privacy and Security

Two days ago Apple introduced the world to iTunes 10 and Ping, Ping is Apple’s answer to social networking and allows users to discover new music, it is integrated into iTunes 10 and could be described as a cross between Facebook, last.fm, Spotify and MySpace.

As with all social networking services there are security and privacy concerns, and it seems as if scammers and spammers were keen to test out Ping.

Sophos suggest that Ping is already riddled with scams and spam messages which try to make users complete online surveys, people fill out these surveys as they mistakenly believe that they will win a free iPhone.

These online surveys are often linked to viruses and malware, such as the Security Suite Virus which affected a huge amount of computers, therefore Ping users are keen for Apple to improve its security and filtering.

Sophos are very critical of Ping’s lack of filtering, here is an official statement from one of their senior consultants, “We’re used to survey scams like this being spread far and wide via sites like Facebook, but clearly the lack of filtering on Ping is making it a brand new playground for the bad guys to operate in”

Apple has not yet officially commented on these security concerns, therefore for now I would recommend not clicking and dodgy looking links within Ping.